on many points, will be more ready to make allowances for the opinions of those who dissent from him; and being convinced that it is the intention and sincerity with which we read and examine, and not our skill in doing so, that will be most acceptable to our Great Master, he will be relieved from the depressing idea, that right belief in particular doctrines is necessary to salvation; - an idea which has, perhaps, occasioned more persecution in the Christian Church, than either pride, covetousness, or the love of domination. For who will scruple to do that, which he supposes will exterminate errors of faith that must necessarily lead to the eternal destruction of human souls? It will naturally tend to quell the pernicious activity of intemperate zeal, -"the wrath of man, which worketh not the righteousness of God." NOTE. MANY efforts of mind have in vain been made to conceive the possibility of the separate persons of three co-eternal Beings, perfectly and equally perfect in attributes, making one Deity. This, however, appears clear, and a matter evident to human intellect, that beings so existing would be actually resolved into one; for being equally omniscient, each must know every thing which the others know; being equally powerful and omnipresent, must be infinitely effective in operation over boundless space; and being equally wise, would necessarily will the same decrees. With reverence be it spoken; were the number of such beings three, or any other number, the unity would be equal; but what is meant by a separation of persons in this immensity of perfection, or what would be the use of such separation, it would be very difficult if not impossible to say. In other points, too, connected with this sublime and awful subject, we are apt to set aside plain sense for the more fanciful intricacies of metaphysics. It has been asserted by some, that to the Divine mind the whole of eternity is but as one moment; for, say they," the present, past, and future are all equally before HIM, and therefore there can be no succession which marks time to inferior beings." That the past, present, and future are all perfectly known to God, is certain; but that they appear or lie before his sight in the same way, is by no means so. Ꮮ The past may be as perfectly known as the present, yet in a different manner which shall distinguish it from the present. A human being of good memory knows as perfectly, or nearly so, what passed before his eyes yesterday, or an hour ago, as if it were actually passing at the present moment, and you can suppose his memory to become perfectly perfect, without in the slightest degree confounding the present with the past; and this remark applies equally to the future, in a mind endowed with foreknowledge. Let us suppose that the past, present, and future presented themselves in the same way before the Divine mind, and then to simplify the matter to our own apprehension, let us suppose the whole course of one man's existence as it would be displayed to his Creator; would he not become multiplied as the various incidents of his life, into a million of men, his infancy, youth, manhood, and age (to say nothing of what follows age and death), making one equally vivid portraiture of his repeated semblances, were there no such distinction as I have intimated above? The human mind is as incapable of comprehending an endless moment, as it is of comprehending a boundless point, or as it is of comprehending that a thing may exist and not exist at the same time. THE END. LONDON: Printed by A. & R. Spottiswoode, New-Street-Square. |